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Tuesday, 10 July 2012

July 2012/2

EYOC 2012 – Some reflections- Mike Long, IOA Juniors Officer.

Together with six of our juniors and Ruth Lynam, I had
the pleasure of attending the recent European Youth Orienteering Championships competition which was held near Limoges in mid
western France. It was my first time attending such a competition and some
reflections on the Irish performance follow. We arrived on a Monday with the
opening sprint due on the Friday. The three days we had for training were
invaluable (maybe essential?) Using a combination of the organiser’s model
events and exercises designed by Ruth we focused mostly on training for the
long distance event which used a 1:15,000 map and on the 1:4000 sprint maps
around classical French villages.

Long course map

The 1:15000 maps were on complex forest terrain with
some rock features and were very different from the WOC 2011 maps. Good use was
made of two nearby lakes for recuperation.

At Friday’s sprint, through the streets of Meymac, and
cheered on by the local Irish, we had some very strong results:

M16 (2.0 km, 85 starters)

1st. Adrien Delenne, Fra, 11:36

15th Jonathan Quinn, Irl, 12:32

M16 sprint map

W16 (1.7 km, 85 starters)

1st. Angelika Maciejewska, Pol, 11:36

29th Roisin Long, Irl, 13:23

54th Aoife Mc Cavana, Irl, 14:41

W18 (1.8 km, 82 starters)

1st. Ekateria Savkina, Rus, 11:47

56th. Niamh Corbett, Irl, 14:33

M18 (2.2 km, 96 starters)

1st. Tristan Blomen, Bel, 12:36

59th Jack Millar, Irl, 14:40

68th Eoin McCullough, Irl, 15:11

Jonathan on the Long course

These good results have to be taken in the perspective
that we have very few (one?) ISSOM sprint standard maps for the whole country.
This is something we need to address given that sprint is now a permanent
fixture of JK, EYOC, JWOC, WOC etc. The coaches’ race followed and included a
mass start to a control at 50 m. Suffice it to say I was a little way behind
the British sprint champion Chris Smithers who won the race, but I was not
last!

The long distance event featured tough courses both
physically and technically and included some long legs across terrain with few
path route options (in other words the
courses were well planned). Again I feel we had some very good results:

M16 (6.4 km, 85 starters)

1st. Mikkel Annen, Den, 45:04

39th Jonathan Quinn, Irl, 62:38

W16 (4.7 km, 85 starters)

1st. Angelika Maciejewska, Pol, 37:23

37th Roisin Long, Irl, 51:54

78th Aoife Mc Cavana, Irl, 76:00

W18 (5.3 km, 83 starters)

1st. Viktoria Sukharevska, Ukr, 45:59

74th. Niamh Corbett, Irl, 77:52

M18 (7.6 km, 96 starters)

1st. Marek Minar, Cze,53:53

58th Jack Millar, Irl, 69:00

63rd Eoin McCullough, Irl, 71:53

Aoife takes her map at the Relay

I realise this involves lots of extrapolation but in
JWOC terms this means we would be on the cusp of two JWOC A finals with several
not too far behind. How can we improve? In my view we need to train more on
forest terrain and we need to focus on long distance route choices. Have we the
maps to do this? If not can we generate some? The senior squad long-O events
next spring could be very valuable for this purpose.

The EYOC party followed. The coaches’ banquet ended at
22:00 at which point we were summarily dismissed with the party in full
swing. For full details ask the juniors ...
I guess it was all summed up the next morning by a quote by a well known W16
who said while dragging herself from the car “How come we can’t be into
something like bird watching?”

Jack at the Sprint

Sunday’s relay was on 1:10:000 maps, with
the first half on runnable beech forest and the second shorter loop on low
visibility light green terrain. This area posed lots of problems and positions
changed dramatically in here, none more so than for the UK M16’s who had led
all the way to the last spectator control but ended up 7th due to
mistakes here. For the first time ever Ireland’s
entry featured two full teams at M18 and W18 (including the three 16’s). Jack
produced a storming finish to come in 10th place (of 29 teams) just
ahead of the UK. Roisin was 16th (of 23). The girls continued to be
solid and finished 18th but only 3 seconds off 16th.
Unfortunately Eoin confused two adjacent controls labelled 60 and 80 in the
dark green area and Ireland were one of 10 teams to record a disqualification.

Personally I feel that overall Ireland
performed very well and it augurs well for the future. I was also proud and
impressed at the overall attitude and conduct of the juniors to the tasks in
hand. They also did not seem to have too much trouble enjoying themselves!

1 comment:

Sprint has become a big part of WMOC (World Masters) too. I managed to qualify for the M55 A final in Bad Harzburg last week out of 287 finishers in my category. When I first entered WMOC, far fewer of the top runners ran sprint. Now they all run as part of their warmup!In the final, I ran past a control and lost a minute which put me down in 65th out of 80.

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The Irish Orienteer has been edited & produced by John McCullough since the early 1980's and has moved into a new phase on the web. E-mail your news to theirishorienteer@gmail.com. Back issues from 1982 are now available here: http://www.orienteering.ie/about-us/archive